Manifestation~

With her arm cradling her head, Soibhan all but lay across the table as she stared at the totem sitting placidly before her. It looked proud, with all four of its feet solidly placed. She'd only seen a few totems, and each one had been slightly different than the others. Hers(and it felt...strange...to say that) was no different. So dark it looked made of shadow, it had stark stripes marking it on rump, neck, and legs. A bright, shifting whorl of orange wrapped about it from the eyes down along the neck. It was warm to the touch and seemed filled with life.

And she didn't know what the hell to do with it.

"You're impatience is showing," Desmond murmured before taking a sip of wine. He sat in his favorite chair by the fire, Liadain beside him on the floor with her head in his lap. His rough fingers stroked her head, right between her ears, and the guardian looked as content as Soibhan had ever seen her.

Scowling, Soibhan kept her gaze on the totem. "How long did it take fer yer Gray Lady to appear?" she asked. It was warm in Desmond's flat, heated as it was by both the fire and the smith shop attached to it. He yawned and shrugged, eyelids heavy. Comghan had settled into his padded nest, Vexation curled around him.

"A few weeks. Maybe more. I don't much remember."

Shifting to a more comfortable position, the gaelic woman sighed. Ever since that night, she'd not consumed even a single drop of alcohol. As her body was wracked by withdrawal, she'd kept the totem as close as she could, and Desmond had kept her from going back to the drink to ease the pain and discomfort as it was worked out of her system. She felt exhausted, but...human again. A humanity restored to her by the givings of the Wardwood, and by the man that sat across the room.

"I...I doona know what te do..." She said it softly, not expecting an answer or a reassurance. But when the room remained silent but for the crackle of the fire, her gaze flicked to her friend, finding that he'd fallen asleep in the chair.

She didn't know what to do with him either. Ever since that morning, when she'd awoken from the first dreamless sleep she'd had in months to find herself in the smith's strong arms, she'd avoided him as best she could. But avoiding Desmond was hard. She had allowed him into so many aspects of her life, so easily and so completely, that going a day without seeing him was uncomfortable. He felt like the closest of friends to her and he had damn near ruined that by coercing her the way he had.

Though, honestly....She couldn't stay mad at him, couldn't let her own wounded pride ruin their friendship. He had been good to her afterall, had made her feel again, if briefly, when she had been all but swallowed by uncertainty and self-pity.

A movement caught her eye and she looked over to find Liadain staring at her, the doe's gaze carefully neutral. Unsure what to make of the look, Soibhan simply stared back. Did the doe somehow guess at her train of thought? Though Liadain showed little love for her chosen outwardly, Soi knew that the cream and gray guardian was fiercely protective of Desmond and had been extremely disapproving of his sleeping with her.

"What does he feel, Gray Lady? Does he love me?" she asked, keeping her voice low and even. But the doe couldn't answer, not really, even if the look in those turquoise eyes spoke volumes all on their own. Liadain's eyes had flashed with a disapproval so intense it almost burned. Whatever Desmond felt, he felt it strongly, against the wishes of his guardian. Laying her ears back, the doe's eyes narrowed on Soibhan before she resettled her head in Desmond's lap and closed them, dismissing Soibhan as easily as breathing.

She didn't know how to feel about all of this. About Desmond, about Rob, about the totem in her hands...With her returned humanity came a renewed sense of loss as she tried to piece everything back together that had broken with her. Golden gaze flicking to the wine bottle in Desmond's slack hand, she contemplated it for what seemed like an eternity's worth of seconds...

But taking the easy way out was not the Breanainn way. That she had let such a weakness overcome her before was insult enough. To let it happen again? Her brother, her father, would never forgive her. Nor would they ever respect her like they had when she'd seen them last. Sighing, she dismissed the bottle as Liadain had dismissed her.

Realization hit her; everyone else was asleep, and, as if seeing the evidence of exhaustion in the others, Soibhan yawned wide until her jaw cracked with the effort. Resting her cheek on the cool wood of the table, she tightened her grip on the totem, letting sleep take her into its warm grasp.

~~~~

The totem dangled from slack fingers over the edge of the table, the woman holding it lost to the deep, consuming sleep of exhaustion. The stone was warm, warmer than it had ever been, but the sleeping woman could not tell. As she shifted, either from discomfort at falling asleep at the table or from some dream, the grip on the totem weakened and it started to slip.

Slowly, slowly, it worked free of the fingers, then fingertips, until finally it began to fall. But before it could strike the ground, the stone exploded into a wash of light that awoke the fox, but none else. There were two soft thumps followed by a faint exhalation. The fox yawned and wiggled her ears, tail tip twitching as she watched the living shadow that moved on the ground beneath the table.

A soft nose peered around the couch, followed by a wedge shaped head and swiveling ears. Vexation wiggled herself carefully free from around the bird and padded on silent paws towards the fawn. Deer and fox met with an exchange of sniffing and tail wagging, though Vex began running circles around the little thing in her excitement. Though normally her odd noises kept them all awake, now she was pointedly quiet, even placing her paws just so to keep her nails from clicking against the floor. The fawn lifted his head and sniffed the fingers that had been holding him moments before, nuzzling the hand before following it to the body slumped in the chair.

His Chosen was sleeping, deeply and without any of her earlier cares present in her slack features.

Blinking large, bright orange eyes, the fawn turned and looked at the fox. Though neither of them made a sound, something passed between them. Tail waving like a flag, Vexation snatched the now duller totem up in her jaws and turned, running to the door that had been propped open mere inches to allow the heat of the smithy's furnace to permeate the flat. The little fawn followed, his hooves tapping softly against the floor.

Running around the smith, Vex sniffed everything she could get her nose into, the totem firmly in her jaws. Following closely behind on wobbly legs, the fawn sniffed everything she did, gaining more and more balance between each object. Whereas many young animals would find the implements of a smith to be terrifying things, he merely tilted his head at them and continued on his way. It wasn't until Vexation climbed up onto some boxes and put her paws against a soot stained window that he seemed unsure. But the fox merely whined as she pushed the window open. It stuck halfway in the sill, but it was enough for fox to coax fawn into wriggling through after her, out into the cold night.

~~~

A presence reached out to her in her sleep. It was like the Wardwood tree all over again, as if something other called out to her from the shadows. A myriad of images came to her, flashing so fast that she couldn't make sense of any of them. It was a jumbled, fuzzy mess that hurt her head more than it showed her anything tangible.

Soibhan awoke with a start, empty fingers clenching into a fist as awareness instantly came to her and she realized her hand was empty when it shouldn't have been. Panicked, she lurched to the side and glanced at the floor for the totem she must have dropped in her sleep, but she found nothing. Frowning, she got down on her hands and knees and searched by the meager light of the nearly dead fire. A shifting of hooves on wood startled her, but it was merely Liadain rising to her feet. The doe peered down at her with an empty expression as she searched under the table and nearby couch, her hands still coming up empty.

"Desmond!"

The smith startled awake at the unexpected tone to her voice, dropping the glass he'd been holding. It shattered as it struck the floor and Liadain jumped back with a disdainful look aimed at her chosen. "What? What's wrong?"

"The totem! It's gone!"

Desmond blinked slowly before trying to wipe the sleep from his good eye. "Gone? It's got to be here somewhere." As he said it, Liadain disappeared into the smithy. With a sigh, the half-asleep man got down on his hands and knees and started searching beneath anything with a large enough space beneath it for a totem to slip under.

"Maybe tha' foolish fox o' yers ran off with it," Soibhan muttered, climbing to her feet and trying not to feel an intense sense of panic. She'd heard the stories of totems getting damaged; if it happened shortly after a choosing, the guardian wouldn't manifest. Biting her lip, she went to the nest she'd made for Comghan, finding the hawk alone, the fox gone. The bird let out an irritated squawk and fluffed all of his feathers in indignation just as Liadain returned, pushing the smithy door open so hard it hit the wall with a bang. The doe stared blankly at her chosen crawling around on the ground like a child before blasting a snort of air under the table.

Desmond climbed to his feet with a sheepish look, an image of an open window coming to him from the irritated doe. His skin went pale and he brushed past her and out the door. "Soibhan!" he called, voice high.

"What?" she hollered, letting the hawk shimmy his way up to her shoulder before she joined Desmond in the blacksmith proper. "Did you find it?"

He touched the small paw prints left in the soot coating the glass and had a moment of once again cursing Soibhan for ever bringing the troublesome little beast home. Soibhan understood what the paw prints meant almost immediately and she ran outside, coming around the side of the smithy to peer at the ground beneath the window. Desmond could see her expression clearly by the light of the moon; it was one of pure, unadulterated panic. He pushed the window up and open the rest of the way, peering down beneath it.

There, perfect in the whitest of snows, were two tracks; one of paws, and one of hooves.

~~~

"It's better than having it manifest on the top of a bar," Desmond murmured and Soibhan missed the remembered horror in his tone. Liadain had done just that, both terrifying and embarrassing him enough to fill his life. She fondly remembered the moment even as her chosen grimaced, laying a hand on her shoulder as she walked beside him. But Soibhan whirled, incensed, worry and anger furrowing her brow and darkening the skin beneath her eyes.

"Better? Better?! Yer fox stole m'fawn an' is takin' it gallivantin' through the biggest city in Sunderland! HOW IS THAT BETTER?"

He winced at her anger and went back to searching the snow for the prints they'd been following for the better part of an hour. For a newly manifested totem, the little bugger definitely had a good set of legs. The problem with tracking their errant companions was that both fox and fawn seemed to be as young children that had gotten into the sugar. The prints criss-crossed, doubled-back, and sometimes completely disappeared as one or both of them jumped atop something to investigate it. Desmond could feel the headache building between his eyes, not to mention the near blaze of angry heat all but exuding from Soibhan. He was surprised it didn't melt the snow around her. Even Liadain had trouble tracking them, which irritated the already smoldering doe. Desmond felt unsafe around the two females and wished he could hide in a snow bank.

When Soibhan stopped to inspect something on the ground, he had a moment to really look at her, to be able to confirm his suspicions. Though her anger was very real, it masked her true emotions; she was more worried than he'd ever seen her.

Guilt punched him in the belly and the smith was determined to fix the wrong his fox had created. Soibhan had waited so long for this moment, to be chosen as the rest of those around her. If something happened to her fawn, Desmond didn't think he would ever be able to forgive himself, and he didn't think Soibhan would be able to either. Mouth set in a hard line, he nodded to himself and vowed to find the fawn.

As they encountered passerby, Desmond would hold back, questioning whether or not they'd seen two very curious animals wandering by. Almost none of them had and he started growing more and more disheartened every time he jogged to catch up to the gaelic woman and his doe. The tracks were getting harder and harder to find as they walked towards a more busy section of the city. Human footprints, horse, dog, carriage...all of them mingled into a snowy slush that all but eradicated the two small tracks of the creatures they followed. Liadain's turquoise eyes finally betrayed her concern when she didn't think anyone was looking; she was keeping her emotions from him at this point, which meant she was feeling something other than her general disapproval of the world around her. Prideful as she was, she would never willingly show worry or panic to anyone, not even him. But he had a hunch that she was concerned for the well-being of the tiny fawn that kept eluding them.

Finally, an elderly couple, with joined hands and stooped backs, told him that they'd seen a very odd sight. "Why yes. We didn't believe it at first, but we saw a fox and fawn. Strangest pair indeed. They were gallivanting through the snow like children." The old woman's eyes sparkled and the old man smiled wide. "It was a wonderful sight."

Desmond whooped for joy, all but clicking his heels together in triumph. Soibhan, nearly thirty feet away, turned back to wonder what was wrong and he fought down the urge to yell the news to her. After all, they hadn't found them yet, but they were close. The old couple pointed the way, bid him hurry, and continued on their walk, leaving Desmond to ran pellmell towards his friend.

"Wha're runnin' fer, Desmond Gray?"

"C'mon!" he said, smiling wide. He grabbed her by the hand before she could protest and began dragging her bodily down a side alley. And just as the couple had said, the tracks picked up again here, less criss-crossed, the marks dragging as if their makers had finally grown weary. As he peered farther down the alley, he saw the tracks turn and he slowed his pace, Soibhan's hand warm in his, even as the wind bit coldly at their skin. There was a stack of wood outside the door to whatever shop controlled this alley and as he peered around it, he saw them. Fox was curled around fawn, her bushy tail covering both of their noses as they slept, and between Vex's curled paws sat the totem, no worse for wear, except maybe some frozen drool.

Soibhan made a small noise that Desmond had never heard her make before, but he staunchly ignored that he had even heard it, unwilling to steal her of anymore of her pride. She crept forward, gently shushing Vex when the fox's good eye parted to watch her approach. But the fox had a cheeky look in that eye and she flicked her tail out of the way, grinning her foxy grin as the woman scooped up the exhausted fawn into her arms. The little thing was black as pitch, and bigger than Liadain had been after her manifestation. The doe came forward and butted him out of the way, craning her neck to nose at the little form as if reassuring herself he was alright. Satisfied, she flicked her tail, turned, and headed for home.

Soibhan hugged her guardian tightly, murmuring quiet words to the little sleeping fawn in a language he'd never heard her speak before. They sounded beautiful, though her tone was a tangled mix of anger and relief.

And if there were tears on her cheeks, well...he'd never tell a soul.

FIN